How to Patch Jeans

Video Transcript

"I am at Deluxe. A retail clothing store and we also do local design fashions consignments here and we also alterations. And right now I am going to show you how to patch a hole in a pair of jeans. Which is already been mended it looks like by two other methods. And as you can see there is one tons and tons of zig zags and what they did is they used a piece of t-shirt material on the bottom. Inside of this one just used another thicker pair of jeans material. The problem with this one which is where the hole split out there is because this fabric is thinner and it is kind of gives a little bit. And this patch doesn't because they used strait stitching. So it locked it in and then the movement wanted to go underneath where it was locked in. It doesn't give. So what I am going to do is get a patch from another piece of fabric. That is a lighter weight one. And I am going to; this one is a small one. But what I am going to do is make that hole bigger by the time I get finished so I am going to get one that matches pretty closely. This matches pretty closely. So what I am going to do is cut. If you cut on a diagonal you will get kind of a stretch if you don't have a stretchy fabric. Diagonal means it is cross wise of the length and the width of the natural weaving of the fabric. So I am going to make sure this one covers. Which it does. You can make it oversize and trim it later if you would like. That way you don't have to keep guessing where your patch is. So what I am going to do is trim away all of these threads which will get caught in my sewing machine needle. So what you do is you just cut off all this extra stuff that is around the edges and I am going to trim off all of this fluffy part on the edges here too. Because your machine will just get caught up into this and sometimes it will knot your thread up and break your thread and you have to kind of start over. Does not have to be super precise. Just so it does not get hung up in the threads. Now I am going to place my patch so I am going to place it over the hole. And now I know it is in the middle of that hole so I can pin just a few pins. One on either end. To keep that part in place. And make sure you have it flat. So I am going to lay this down flat. As flat as you can because it is kind of bulky. And then pin the other end. And then you want this to line up where it would naturally fall. If the fabric was intact. OK so now what I am going to do is use a zig zag on my machine. So I am using this matching thread to zig zag a stitch close to the cut edge. It does not have to be to close because I am going to go around several times. Take your pin out. And just kind of follow that shape. Make sure your other fabric is not bunched up underneath as you go along. And I make sure my needle is down in there. And check this the fabric. And keep going around the shape and now I am back around to where I started. So I just keep going around and around with a zig zag stitch and I will go over those edges. Really close to the fabric edge to kind of lock down all those loose threads. You can keep going around and around and around until you get everything close to the edge of your new patch of fabric. As close as you want it. And so that is how you patch a pair of jeans."